12 March 2013

“While marriage may bring joy, help, and relief in certain areas, it immediately multiplies your distractions because you’re intimately responsible for this other person, his or her needs, dreams, and growth. It’s a high calling and a good calling, but a demanding one that will keep you from all kinds of other good things.

Therefore, for the not-yet married, our (temporary) singleness is a gift. It really is. If God leads you to marriage, you may never again know a time like the one you’re in right now. A season of singleness is not merely the minor leagues of marriage. It has the potential to be a unique period of undivided devotion to Christ and undistracted ministry to others.

With the Spirit in you and the calendar clear, God has given you the means to make a lasting difference for his kingdom. You’re all dressed up, having every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), with literally everywhere to go.”

“The biblical promise that I turn to most is that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called by him (Romans 8:28). I have to lean on the reality that even if it doesn’t look good to me, or feel good to me, God is ultimately being glorified. And in the end, even if it’s not until I am in heaven, it will work out to my benefit. Even if I don’t realize it until heaven, it will work out for my benefit.

I lean on that because life is difficult. Life is hard. It’s complicated. It’s not peachy keen, as a lot of people would like to make it seem. It takes a lot of leaning on the hope that is in Jesus. Without that hope we are just left to go insane, to be at our wit’s end. So this is the promise I hold to.”

“[God's] ultimate concern is not to get you or me from point A to point B along the quickest, easiest, smoothest, clearest route possible. Instead, his ultimate concern is that you and I would know him deeply as we trust him more completely. ”